PRE-SOVIET
The word ‘pogrom’ originates in Russian and as a term to describe anti-Jewish riots from around 1881 throughout the southwestern provinces of the Russian empire. The name has evolved into a generic term for any attack on an ethnic or religious minority.
On March 1, 1881, Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator, was assassinated by terrorists from the group Narodnaia Volia (The People’s Will). A period of great uncertainty followed and an avalanche of rumors swept over the country. On April 15, 1881, a riot broke out between Christians and Muslims in the provincial town of Baku, on the Caspian Sea. On the same day a tavern brawl in the city of Elisavetgrad (in the province of Kherson) escalated into a serious riot, during which Jewish shops and homes were attacked and looted. News of the anti-Jewish disorders traveled along railroad lines, rivers, and other routes of communication, provoking additional, but less violent, attacks in the countryside and small towns. On April 26 a major riot erupted in Kiev, which lasted for three days and prompted copycat violence all over Kiev Province. A third wave of pogroms began in Pereislav (in the province of Poltava) on June 30
The outbreak of violence on such a wide scale, in what was seen as a police state, as well as the apparent unwillingness or inability of the authorities to suppress the pogroms, inspired contemporaries to claim that the pogroms had been instigated and organized.

Russian Revolution
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Russian Civil War

During the Russian Civil War, an estimated 100,000 Jews perished in pogroms perpetrated by Symon Petlyura’s Ukrainian nationalist separatists and the White forces led by Anton Denikin. The only armed force in the Russian Civil War that did not systematically terrorize the Jews was the Red Army of the Soviet Government. Jews came to regard the Red Army as their protector, and young Jews joined it in order to avenge crimes against their families

Although early Soviet leaders treated anti-Semitism with “utter contempt”, and strong efforts were made by Soviet authorities to contain anti-Jewish bigotry, some Red Army units perpetrated pogroms during the Russian civil war, and the Soviet-Polish War of 1919–1920, notably at Baranovichi. These abuses were committed by the Boguny and Tarashchany regiments, which had earlier belonged to Petlyura’s Ukrainian nationalist army and had only recently switched sides to join Semyon Budyonny’s Red Army forces.

SOVIET ERA

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POST-SOVIET
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WHAT DO YOU THINK?
DO THESE CONSTITUTE WAR CRIMES OR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?
SHOULD ANYONE BE PROSECUTED FOR THEM?
IF SO, WHO?